Mobile home park residents rally against measure banning rent control

A serene landscape of oaks, grassy swales and lazy creeks in Citrus Heights provides an unlikely backdrop for a nasty statewide battle over one of the last bastions of affordable housing.

Two years ago, many of the residents of Lakeview Village Mobile Home Park fought for a local ordinance that would cap rents in the 500-home Citrus Heights park as new owners imposed a steep increase.

They lost. Now a statewide initiative on the June ballot would make it impossible for Citrus Heights, or any other jurisdiction in California, to impose rent controls on apartments or mobile home parks.

The stated purpose of Proposition 98 is to make it impossible for governments to seize property by eminent domain to turn over to private developers.

But a major secondary effect of the initiative – opponents say the true motive – is to ban rent control. About a million Californians currently live in rent-controlled apartments or mobile homes. A competing measure on the June ballot, Proposition 99, would put fewer restrictions on eminent domain, and does not address the question of rent control at all.

More than a dozen cities have some form of rent control for apartments, mostly in pricey coastal areas such as Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Monica.

Rent control plays out differently in mobile home parks, where tenants own the home but not the land beneath it and would have to pay a considerable amount – more than $10,000 – to move their property.

If Proposition 98 passes, opponents say, residents of mobile home parks such as Lakeview will fall prey to the greed of owners who can jack up rents willy-nilly.

Backers point out that park tenants now protected by rent control won't feel the brunt of market forces. The cap will only lift when the mobile home changes hands.

They say rent control forces owners to subsidize affordable housing, a role better left to government. Besides, they say, many mobile home park tenants don't need the subsidy.

"People who live in mobile home parks are not all destitute," said Sheila Dey, executive director of the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, a park owner association and major financial backer of Proposition 98.

Initiative supporters add that rents would still be constrained by the market, as well as long-term lease agreements between the owners and tenants.

Lakeview Village doesn't look much like a battle ground. Residents say they enjoy the rustic atmosphere – the wild turkeys and lordly oak trees.

Barbara Neal, who moved in with her mother a few years ago, took up bocce for the first time in her 63 years, lured by a court just behind the main community center.

Neal even surprised herself by participating in park-sponsored bingo. "My God, who plays bingo?" she said.

Many of the houses at Lakeview Village look far too dug in to qualify for the moniker "mobile." One place, on a double lot, features a two-car garage and a front porch fortified by brickwork.

For years, the park was owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, which kept rents low. But faced with mounting legal costs from sexual abuse cases involving priests, the diocese sold the park in 2005 to a private group.

Residents at Lakeview and the nine other Citrus Heights mobile home parks tried to get the City Council to approve a rent-control ordinance, attempting to join about 100 other California jurisdictions that have such laws. The measure failed when opponents of the law pointed out that the mayor lives within 500 feet of a park, creating a potential conflict of interest.

At Lakeview, meanwhile, rents indeed went up sharply.

Eva Bacon, 80, who moved there with her husband because the country atmosphere reminded them of their native Paradise, suddenly had to pay $170 more a month.

She still enjoys living there. "They keep it up really well," she said. But she recognizes the new owners didn't pay $35 million without expecting to turn a profit.

Still, owner Dick Bessire says he has engaged in a voluntary form of rent control at Lakeview by offering tenants five-year leases in which yearly increases are limited to the Consumer Price Index.

About the writer:

• Call John Hill, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5543.